


All I Want For Christmas Is You

by evol_love



Category: Dead Poets Society (1989)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Christmas, Christmas Fluff, F/F, Genderswap, Nonbinary Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-26
Updated: 2014-12-26
Packaged: 2018-03-03 15:19:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2855585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evol_love/pseuds/evol_love
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My secret santa present for dekkaisdefyinggravity.tumblr.com--a genderswapped Dead Poets Society college au.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All I Want For Christmas Is You

**Author's Note:**

> This is a DPS secret santa present! Everyone in this is a girl, except Charlie, who is as always, nonbinary. Gemma and Tess (Gerard and Todd) are also trans girls because trans girls are amazing and so are they. Enjoy :)

Tess’s face is pink, obscured by her hat (pulled down) and her scarf (pulled up), when she comes into the cafe. A sharp gust of cold air follows her in as the door falls shut once more. 

“Sorry, sorry, I know I’m late,” she says in a rush, already unwrapping her winter layers as she hurries over to the table where the others are already seated. She stops just short of the table, suddenly looking more timid than frantic. She glances at Nell, who is, as always, smiling at her. She bites her lip and looks down at the floor instead. She’s _always_ late these days. “Sorry,” she says again, more quietly.

“It’s fine, someone in here said that traffic got held up by some Christmas thing downtown,” Nell reassures her, scooting over in the booth and forcing Nora to do the same to make room for Tess, who sits beside Nell. Charlie, Stephanie, and Gemma are all crammed into the other side of the booth, and Cam has a chair pulled up at the end of the table.

“Okay. Let’s do this.”

They were all fast friends last year, their freshman year at NYU. Nell and Tess were roommates (and had requested each other this year as well) and Gemma and Steph had gone to high school together. Charlie and Nell were in the same tap class, and Nora had _literally_ fallen into their laps one day at the coffeeshop (it involved a game of ultimate frisbee, long story). Cam and Gemma became best friends after Gemma mentioned something about being ace in class one day and Cam had freaked out about actually finding another ace girl to talk to. From there, everything had just sort of fallen into place. 

Cameron pulls out her painfully thick chemistry book to start studying with Gemma. Charlie and Tess are yelling at each other about some English class thing that no one else can even comprehend, too much hollering about assonance and literary resonance and whatever the fuck else pretentious writers talk about. Everyone has broken off into their own splinters of the group so they can all study with people who actually know what they’re doing. And if Charlie is pressed a little too close against Stephanie’s side while she and Tess argue about Shakespeare, if Nell keeps looking up at Tess through her eyelashes over the theater history textbook she’s reading, no one says anything about it. It isn’t as if any of it’s new anyway.  
****************************************  
“Hey, Steph,” Charlie says as she starts packing up. Cameron, Nora, and Nell have already gone home--Nell has class and Cameron and Nora are just boring and/or tired. Gemma bites her lip to keep from laughing out loud when she glances up and sees how red Steph’s face is with Charlie leaning in to speak softly in her ear. “Were you planning on going to Nell’s performance this weekend?” 

“Uh, I was thinking about it, I might need to study though.”

“Oh. Well, I was thinking, if you were already going, we should just go together.” Charlie has the tone of someone aiming for casual and failing so miserably. She’s drumming her fingers against her thighs, an obvious sign of how nervous she is to anyone who isn’t Stephanie. Stephanie, to the amusement of the rest of the girls, has somehow never noticed Charlie’s enormous crush on her, a crush so big that it rivals Stephanie’s own crush on Charlie. 

“Yeah, alright,” Stephanie says at last, smiling and brushing a stray gingery curl out of her eyes, fidgeting with her glasses absently in that way she does when she’s anxious about something. “Sounds fun.”

Charlie beams. “Awesome, I’ll come by yours and Gemma’s around 7? Maybe we could go get dinner or something before?” 

Gemma almost bangs her head against the wall because this is SO OBVIOUSLY A DATE and she just KNOWS that Stephanie is going to come running to her as soon as they get home begging for advice and wondering hopelessly if this is a date. She can already anticipate the hours of Steph completely _not_ believing her as she repeats over and over again “ _Yes_ I _do_ think Charlie likes you, Steph.” 

“Yeah, that would be nice.” Stephanie smiles, lingering a second before wimping out and running out the door with Gemma, leaving Charlie to wonder if Stephanie even realized she was asking her out.  
*********************************************  
“You’re coming to my play, right?” Nell asks as she and Tess walk back to their dorm. 

“Well, of course, you’ve only been talking about it since the moment you got cast,” Tess drawls, but she’s smiling too hard for Nell to take her sarcastic tone seriously. She pulls Tess into a hug without even thinking about it. 

“I’m glad you’re coming. It makes all the nerves disappear when I know you’re out there. because you’re like...you’re the one person I know will always root for me, no matter what.” She pulls back and just looks at Tess, who is flushing pink from the cold. 

“I can’t even imagine you getting nervous. You were probably born reciting Shakespeare.”

“This isn’t Shakespeare though! It’s Dickens!” 

“Oh, shut up, Nell, you know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I do,” she grins, pulling Tess close by slinging an arm over her shoulder. 

“You’re going to be great, I know you are,” Tess tells her seriously. 

Nell looks back at her and Tess feels like her heart might beat its way out of her chest. “For you, I will be,” she replies.  
*****************************************************  
“So what actually is this play that Nell’s in?” Stephanie asks as she and Charlie walk into the restaurant. “You’ll have to forgive my not knowing what’s going on in all this Christmas stuff.”

“Oh, right, of course. It’s basically about this capitalist bastard who gets haunted and realizes he’s full of shit and saves Christmas.”

“Isn’t that _The Grinch_ though?”

“That’s literally the plot of every Christmas movie, it’s always either the capitalist bastard or the family shenanigans.” 

“I look forward to it, then.”

The hostess takes them to a corner table and they bury themselves in the menus, even though they eat here all the time and know exactly what they’re getting. After they order, their menus taken away, they find they both feel suddenly awkward. 

“Hi,” Steph says, smiling at Charlie, and god, she can’t even stand how cute Stephanie is one more second.

"Okay, I'm just. I'm just going to come out and say it because it's Christmas and what better time and all that."

"I'm Jewish," Steph points out, brow furrowed.

"Fuck, I _know_ that, that isn't--look. Christmas isn't the point, the point is that I'm fucking in love with you."

She sounds so frantic and cross that Stephanie almost doesn't hear her. It takes her a minute to process what she just heard, and clearly Charlie is just as shocked with herself because her eyes are wide and her mouth is gaping open just a little. 

"Uh."

Silence.

Stephanie laughs helplessly. She feels bad because she knows Charlie will read into it, she puts her hands over her mouth, but she giggles until she can't breathe, clutching the edge of the table for support. 

"Thank god for that," she says at last, and Charlie looks so fucking hopeful and terrified that it breaks Stephanie's heart just a little. "Come here," she says, but she doesn't even wait for Charlie to lean in over the table before she takes her face in her hands and kisses her.  
When she pulls away, Charlie slumps back into her seat. 

“Uh, this was a date, wasn’t it? I wasn’t--I didn’t--” 

“Steph I just told you I love you, I think we can skip the fear that you’ve somehow misread this situation.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

Charlie bites her lip and looks down at her lap a moment. It doesn’t even feel real, it all happened so fast and it’s more than Charlie ever even dreamed of. 

“So, does this mean we’re like...dating now?”

“If you’d like to be,” Stephanie says, trying and likely failing to hide how much she wants to be dating Charlie, how much she has wanted Charlie for months, since they first started hanging out last year. 

“Yeah. I’d like that a lot.” Charlie pauses. “I sound so calm and collected right now. Let me assure you, I’m a goddamn mess. But you knew that.”

“But you’re my mess.” 

Charlie actually slaps her hand over her face, but Stephanie can still see that she’s blushing. “Who even says something like that? You’re so perfect oh my god.” 

Stephanie reaches her hand across the table and Charlie takes it her own, smiling at her. 

“I know it’s not really your thing, but wow. Merry Christmas to me.”

“Charlie?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you too.”  
*********************************************  
The whole play is quite good, but Tess can barely take her eyes off of Nell. Every time she’s onstage, Tess feels her heart soar, and it makes her want to curl up in her room and write poetry for days, but enough. Enough of that. She has let this go on long enough, and it’s Christmas, and if there’s anything that romcom Charlie makes them watch every year has taught her, it’s that at Christmas, you tell the truth. And the truth is, Tess is kind of in love with this girl. If she can’t find the courage to tell Nell now, maybe she never will. 

The curtain call drags on and on and Tess starts to lose her nerve, but then the curtain closes and the house lights come up. Tess knows exactly where to find Nell in the lobby, although honestly Nell would probably let her into the dressing rooms anyway. 

She rounds the corner upon leaving the auditorium and Nell is already surrounded by friends and admirers, including Charlie and Stephanie, who have their arms around each other and who are proving a rather positive omen. When she sees Tess, she beams and waves her over.

“I’m so glad you came!” Nell exclaims, as if she’s surprised, as if Tess could possibly stay away, or would want to. 

“Of course I did. You were amazing.” 

Nell pulls her into another hug, and she figures it’s kind of now or never, and she stretches up and kisses her. 

It’s fucking fantastic. It’s like nothing Tess has ever felt. It isn’t a feeling she even knows how to begin capturing in a poem. She reaches up and puts her arms around Nell’s neck and feels as Nell relaxes into the kiss. 

They pull apart, Tess still with her arms around Nell’s neck, and Nell leans in and pecks her once, twice, three times more. 

“I can’t even make fun of you for this, your timing is the worst,” Charlie says loudly. Steph swats at her arm and kisses her to shut her up. 

“Leave them alone,” Stephanie whispers loudly. 

“Only if you do that again,” Charlie replies, but this time she kisses Stephanie first.

“So,” Nell says, bringing Tess’ focus back to the fact that...yeah. She just kissed her roommate. 

“So.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but why did you kiss me?”

“Why do you think I kissed you?” Tess counters, because seriously, what kind of a question is that. 

“Well, I don’t _know_ , but I’m really hoping that it’s because you might like me? Because um. I really like you. A lot.”

Tess buries her face in Nell’s shoulder for a moment to gather herself. “Sorry,” she mumbles to Nell’s shoulder. “I’m just feeling very overwhelmed. Give me a second.”

“Take your time,” Nell says gently, and Tess loves her, she really really loves her.

“Okay,” she pulls back at last. “I really like you a lot too. I’ve liked you from the moment I met you, and I think you’re beautiful, and I would really like to be your girlfriend, if that’s what you want. and if you don’t, if it will make things weird, that’s okay. I just had to try.”

“You have to know how much I like you too, Tess. You have to know that. Everyone knows I’ve been hung up on you from the moment you walked through that door in our dorm.”

“So is that a yes, or?”

“Yes, Tess. I’m saying yes.”

Tess, Nell, Charlie, and Stephanie walk home together, snow falling in that picturesque way it does at the end of romantic movies but never seems to actually happen in real life. Charlie is holding Stephanie’s hand inside Stephanie’s coat pocket because she’s ridiculous and refuses to wear gloves, and Nell and Tess are practically falling down, the way they keep laughing and hanging all over each other. 

And that night, Nell wraps her arms around Tess as they cuddle in her bed that night, and Charlie presses Stephanie up against the doorway of her own dorm and kisses her in this rough, adoring way that makes Stephanie’s heart feel like it’s ready to burst,. 

“This is going to be extremely corny, and you’re going to have to forgive me,”

“Okay, but only because I love you.”

“All I wanted for Christmas was you,” Charlie says, and Stephanie wants to laugh, but she looks just a little too honest.

“Well, I’m glad you got what you wished for,” she says in reply. 

“Happy Hanukkah, Steph.”  
******************************************


End file.
